Date: 14 September 2010 (6:30-8pm)
Oxford Bookstore, Kolkata
The Distance takes place in both an India of social revolution and a North America of immigrant assimilation. It is about human contradictions and dilemmas, and about characters torn apart by the fast-changing social landscape of two worlds. The narrator, a young Indian woman named Mini, must constantly choose between success and morality, between what she once wanted to be and what she has become. It is Mini's intelligence, awareness and strength of character--even more than the decision she must make between two worlds and two men--that set this story apart. Mini is neither the typical housewife nor the poor uneducated woman that has been the traditional lens in most Indian fiction written in English. She is educated and socially conscious, and her political involvements in India make her a keen observer of North American society, even if they cannot really help her with matters of the human heart. Because she is young, human and a woman, all that Mini really wants at first is to be with Amitav, her classmate and a young man who is deeply involved in revolutionary politics in India. But Amitav appears indifferent to Mini's love. Consumed by the all-powerful force of his political being, he drags Mini into one risky situation after another. Mini]s biggest test comes when she accompanies Amitav to a remote village in India to participate in a peasant's struggle against an oppressive and corrupt political system. Here, under the moon, Mini and Amitav make love for the first time. As the protest intensifies, their lives are threatened; and Mini grows more and more apprehensive. She leaves Amitav to return to the city and her family.
After painful soul-searching, she decides to abandon a suffocating middle-class future in India and consents to an arranged marriage with an engineering graduate student, with whom she moves to Vancouver. Even as she escapes from Amitav, however, Mini is haunted by his ideas, political beliefs, passion and commitment. Despite herself, she still sees the world through his eyes. Her husband's pragmatism, sobriety and professional success only heighten her loneliness and isolation. Mini returns to India and, without intending to, meets Amitav again, only to realize how different her life has become: While Amitav continues to struggle against oppression and injustice, she is engaged in trivial, self-indulgent pursuits in Canada. Though she does not know it yet, before long she will have to choose not only between two continents, two different ideologies, two different ways of life, but between the men she loves.
About the Author
Saborna Roychowdhury was born and raised in Calcutta, India, and moved to the U.S. for her undergraduate work in chemistry. She now lives in Massachusetts, and teaches at the Middlesex Community College. Her short fiction has appeared in New York Stories and Quality Women Magazine U.K. and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a contributing writer to Chillibreeze, Hilltown Families, Associated Content, and other online magazines.
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